CD Projekt offers 2021 roadmap, cancels stand-alone Cyberpunk online game

CD Projekt today released its latest group strategy update, which not only talked about various aspects and changes going on at the company, but also provided a roadmap for what’s coming to Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 in 2021.

As part of the video, CD Projekt Red talked about shifting to annual roadmaps for games, versus the five-year plans the company would previously work off of at times.

In a slide during this discussion, we see that for 2021, Cyberpunk 2077 is due for “patches and updates, free DLC, and a next-gen update.” Meanwhile, The Witcher 3 has on tap “The Witcher: Monster Slayer, the game’s next-gen update, and ‘further development of Gwent.'”

According to CD Projekt Board of Directors member Michał Nowakowski, the team is “focused on improving [Cyberpunk 2077] with updates and patches—that’s our top priority right now.” He continues on that “once the game is at the standard we are aiming for, we will focus on releasing the next-gen update.” So, hopefully that does indeed happen during 2021.

Moving on to The Witcher, Nowakowski talks a bit about the free mobile AR game The Witcher: Monster Slayer, and then gave a timetable for the release of the main game’s next-gen update: the second half of 2021.

One other interesting tidbit from the presentation is that, according to CD Projekt head of production and CTO Paweł Zawodny, if everything about the company’s “Red 2.0” transformation plan goes as it hopes, CD Projekt Red “can begin parallel AAA game development starting in 2022.”

Which then leads into a pretty large announcement as the video turns to the topic of online. In talking about the company’s considerations of what it means to add online to games as a studio typically focused on single-player experiences, president and joint CEO Adam Kiciński makes this announcement;

“Previously, we hinted that our next AAA [title] would be a multiplayer Cyberpunk game. But, we have decided to reconsider this plan. Given our new, more systematic, and agile approach, instead of primarily focusing on one big online experience or game, we are focusing on bringing online to all of our franchises one day.”